We took a trip...

Oh my. It was a doozy. Caroline called it a "Mystery Vacation," implying that it was a vacation. I am still tired.

When we stopped in Haicang to pick up some of our people, we saw this.

 Someone started their day off wrong. That's a three foot deep canal/gutter thing. Awesome.

We were asked to go on a work retreat with a couple of the divisions from the office. We went to Dongshan Island. It's about 2.5 hours south down the coast. They call it Fujian's Hawaii. Now I've never been to Hawaii, but I think that's a stretch.

But it was pretty. When we got there we are a seafood lunch by the ocean. It was interesting.

When we got there, we found that the we and Kleins were to be given a hotel room, instead of the "beach hut" that the rest of the group would be staying. Supposedly we got the nicer end of the deal.
Here is what we found:

Um. No. I was scared to sit on the bed. About 20 min. later Selena came and told us that the huts were nicer and would we be okay to share one (Allens/Kleins). We said yes. Because it couldn't really get worse, could it?

It was so much better. We did have to sleep in twin beds, but as Daniel said, he wasn't going to bug me by messing up the bedding. I'm a bedding neat freak.

Much better.

Then we went to lunch. Fun! (here is where I wish had an emoticon that is the fake forced smile.) But the lunch wasn't actually bed. Just interesting.

 Our view from out table.

 The breeze was nice.

 Crawdads. They called them shrimp's uncle.

 Kung pao sea food. It was actually pretty good.

 Daniel getting ready to eat a cuddle fish (squid family).

 Black teeth from the ink sack. I promise that my husband brushes his teeth.

 Paul showing us how to peel the Shrimp's uncle.

 Oysters. They were cooked. Daniel said they weren't bad. Keep in mind, my husband keeps claiming he "doesn't like seafood." Yeah right. He does now.

 Bitter gourd soup with clams. The clams would have been good, except the bitter gourd made them taste like furniture polish.

 Kung pao clams. Good, but spicy.

They had a wave runner to ride. This was Bella with Paul. Selena took Caroline for a ride and Caroline said Selena was an awful driver. So they switched and it got better. Then Caroline went swimming with Selena and Christine. Christine, who lives in Xiamen - an island in the ocean - had never been in the ocean. They didn't have swimsuits, so they went in their clothes. 

 Tons of fun.

Waving at us!

There are too many pictures to put it all in one post, so my next post will be about dinner and fireworks and bobing. Tons of fun. I ate way too much food.